


Transience

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: NCIS
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, F/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-30
Updated: 2008-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a bitter sadness underlying the anger that keeps her from lashing out at him in return. Somewhat angsty Tiva post-ep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transience

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 6x08 ["Cloak"]
> 
> Very vague sequel in [_Commence_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/175077).

“Were you that upset with her?”

NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, who has stared down the wrong ends of more types of guns than he cares to count (all without flinching), freezes mid-chew at six words from his partner. He’s still stuck in a strange state of limbo between fury and misery, and all it’s left him thus far is confusion. Dinner, though he couldn’t pronounce it if his life depended on it, has been impressively good up until this point, but now it sits like a lump of lead in his stomach. He keeps his eyes firmly on the counter, since he knows he can’t lie well enough to fool her if she has a chance to meet his eye.

“Who?” he asks, trying to play dumb and stalling for time all to one.

He’d shown up at her house almost two hours ago with a six-pack of beer and a bottle of the cognac she liked so much. If she’d recognised it as a peace offering for blowing up at her in the elevator, she hadn’t mentioned it, pulling the door open a little wider to let him in and asking if he’d eaten yet instead. Now he was beginning to question the wisdom of saying no.

“Do not play dumb, Tony,” she says quietly, but there’s a sharp note in her voice that almost makes him flinch. “You know what I am talking about.”

For a long moment, he says nothing; then, “Were you?”

This isn’t a conversation he wants to have with her—now or ever. Because Ziva David knew Jennifer Shepard far better than he, and he’s not in the right headspace to be hearing what a wonderful human being she was. For that matter, he’s not sure he ever _will_ be, but it’s the now that has him cornered, and he can worry about the future later.

It isn’t the answer she was expecting, and surprise registers in her eyes for a brief second. “I asked you first,” she reminds him, and a wry expression crosses his face.

“What are we, four?” She just looks at him with that steady gaze of hers; he resists the urge to tell her they’re not in interrogation and sighs. “I was,” he says finally.

She hadn’t been expecting such bluntness anymore than she’d been expecting his last answer, so it is her turn to freeze, fork halfway to her mouth; the smile he turns her way is humourless. “She screwed me,” he continues flatly. “Yes, I was upset with her.”

“She did what she thought was best,” Ziva counters softly—even her Mossad training is not enough to keep her from trying to defend her friend.

“Bull,” Tony answers in that flat tone. “Leaving us so she could die in the desert alone, maybe. Stupid, but maybe. Using me in her own personal vendetta against the Frog? Not so much.”

“And yet—”

He cuts her off, not wanting to hear her say how it’s his fault that broke him thoroughly. If he’s the one to say it, he can continue with the self-recrimination, but he doesn’t want to hear her, with her officer’s training and steely resolve, tell him he should have left his heart back in the office.

“I shouldn’t have fallen for her, I know,” he snaps, but there’s a bitter sadness underlying the anger that keeps her from lashing out in return.

She’d spent months reeling after Roy died, hating the perverseness of love and wondering why it had to be that she fell for a man who was already cursed. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the words to explain this to him, because her one attempt backfired and he’s still defencive, convinced everyone blames him as much he blames himself.

“It’s my fault it hurt me when she left, and it’s my fault it hurt her—I know. I—”

Ordinarily, she’d have waited for him to take a breath. Since it’s fairly clear he’s trying to talk over her now, she gives up and cuts him off.

“No, Tony. I was going to say that you still blame yourself for Jen’s death.”

It remains a statement, not a question, and more curious than accusatory. He doesn’t correct her use of present tense, either, though he almost flinches when he realises how off the mark his assumptions had been.

“I should have known better.” Before she can come up with a response, he changes gears, throwing her into the spotlight instead. “And you?”

Asking what he’s referencing is a useless ploy, and she knows it, so she tells him the truth, even though she hasn’t said it to anyone since Jenny died. “I was disappointed in her, Tony. She should have known better. Gibbs and I both taught her better, even if no one else did.”

She sighs, then reaches across the space between them, tipping his chin up with unusually gentle fingers. “It was not your fault,” she says softly, continuing to hold his gaze when he would have flinched away. “I am as much to blame as you are, but neither of us caused this.”

“Following orders isn’t always a good enough reason,” comes his somewhat sharp answer.

“Sometimes it is all you have.”

“And if it isn’t enough?” he snaps back.

Pulling back, she shrugs. “You must make do with what you have.”

He huffs out a laugh, putting down his fork so he can pick up his wineglass. “You’re a wonderful source of comfort; anyone ever tell you that?”

Resisting the urge to flinch at the unwonted harshness underlying his words, she shrugs again. “I was taught practicality, Tony. Sometimes it is comforting and sometimes not, but it is what it is.”

It’s his turn to sigh, and he shakes his head, abruptly changing the subject once again. “How’s your nose?”

“My—” For a moment, she’s confused, thrown by the shift. “Oh. It’s fine. Your bruises look lovely.”

“They look worse than they feel.”

Privately, she doubts that—the butt of a gun hurts no matter what it is, and it’s happened to her too many times to count—but outwardly she doesn’t counter it, because it’s simply not worth it, and if he wishes to suffer in the silence of self-condemnation, there is little she can do to change that. So they eat without speaking for long minutes. Both have lost their appetites, though neither will admit it to the other, so they force themselves to choke down their dinner, which is a shame, because the food is good enough to deserve appreciative enjoyment.

Finally, she’s swilling the wine around in her glass, watching the movement of the liquid to avoid watching him. What she really wants to ask is if he’s really done pretending, though maybe a better word for it is “dancing”, but what comes out is, “What did Gibbs have to say?”

He’s startled out of his own thoughts, which parallel hers, ironically enough, at her words. He wants to ignore it, to ask her why she looked like she’d been punched in the gut when he’d walked out of the elevator, because even though she thinks he didn’t notice, he did. Instead, he has to piece his thoughts back together, so he asks “What?” because he actually isn’t sure of what she means.

“After you walked into Autopsy,” she clarifies. Silently, she curses herself—a Mossad officer of her rank should not be afraid of a conversation, and yet she can’t bring herself to say the word “elevator” for fear of the domino effect it may have.

The laugh that precedes his answer is harsh, caustic, more a bark than a laugh—so unlike Tony that for a split second she’s almost frightened because she can’t recognise her partner. “Productive, if nothing else,” he tells her. “Ducky was just as pissed, but at least Gibbs will own up to using people.”

The “unlike Jenny” hangs in the air like a dagger on a fraying thread, and Ziva rushes forward, trying to stop it from finally snapping. “He is not unreasonable,” she says, then realises the moment the words leave her mouth that she’s cut straight through another fibre.

“True,” Tony concedes, “which is rare, but he doesn’t sit on false pride.” He laughs that same barking laugh again, adding, “I don’t think he knows what that is.”

Then he stands—almost abruptly, without any real reason. “Thanks for dinner. Sorry for taking up your night.” She opens her mouth to tell him he hasn’t, but he doesn’t give her a chance to talk, continuing, “You want these in the kitchen?”

Again, he doesn’t give her a chance to respond, up and moving in that direction by the time she says, “Sure.” She follows him, placing her own on the counter and wondering what on earth she said.

“Thank you for the drinks,” she says as she pulls his light jacket from her coat closet.

It is only then, when they stand in the entryway, that he slows, like he’s just escaped from a trap. What she doesn’t realise is that’s exactly how he feels, that they’ve been brushing on forbidden topics all evening and he thinks he should leave before he says things he’ll regret come morning.

He nods, taking it from her. “You’re welcome.”

His eyes lock on hers, and though he is fully Tony, there’s something else there that has her wondering when her partner changed so much. He’s been different since Jeanne—the timeline of the shift is undeniable—but not in the way she expected. The sparkle isn’t as present in his eyes anymore; his smiles are just as frequent as they used to be, but sometimes they seem more forced; but instead of turning cold and bitter, he’s become more cautious, and at the same time, emboldened. Tonight, wine and the anger of the past few days combine with that boldness, forming a victorious triumvirate that has him placing his free hand at the back of her neck and his lips against hers.

His kiss is warm, sweet, tasting faintly of wine and spices and completely lacking the harshness or the desperation she’d been subconsciously expecting. The Mossad officer in her wants to yank her knife from her belt and hold it to his throat, demanding what the hell he’s thinking, if only on principle. The decidedly non-clinical part of her—the woman, perhaps—wants to give in to the tension that’s been building, arguably since that damned undercover mission three years ago. She’s gotten better at letting herself simply be human since she started spending time in America, so she tells the officer to shut up and kisses him back. That officer can’t quite give up, however, so she becomes the aggressor, running the tip of her tongue over his lips until he lets her in. She runs one hand across his back, the other braced at the back of neck, and she resists the urge to shiver as the loose fabric of the jacket draped over his arm brushes against the bare skin at the small of her back.

When he pulls back, he can’t quite suppress the smile at her slightly bemused look, but he adds, “I told you I was done pretending.”

Then he’s pulling open her front door before she can so much as blink, because though part of him wants nothing more than to take her to bed and make love to her until he can’t remember how much the past eighteen months has hurt, there’s the mildly more rational, if also more cynical, part that’s telling him to back off before either of them have to start talking about mistakes. He doesn’t want her to become a mistake—and not just because she’ll find a wonderfully creative way to kill him—since he’s not sure she’ll become anything at all, so he lets himself out with a soft, “Good night, Ziva.”

There’s promise in the words, an offer of more if she is willing to take it, but he needs this to be a mutual desire if it turns out to be more than a passing fancy. Jeanne taught him the value of a longer relationship, though perhaps she ruined him, too, for he hasn’t had a single one-night stand since they imploded (exploded, too, in both a literal and metaphorical sense) into intangible little pieces. Even though she made him relearn betrayal, too, he still wants to find that again; he just wants it to be real this time.

She wants him to stay, to do more than tease her with a kiss; she wants to take him up on the husky offer that whispers beneath his goodnight like silk on bare skin; but by the time she catches the door in its closing arc and sticks her head into the hall, he is gone. It’s nothing more than pride that keeps her from picking up her phone and calling him back; she will see him tomorrow. If he can’t look her in the eye and is cracking too many jokes, she will either pretend tonight never happened or throw her knife at him; if he can, if his eyes read the way they did tonight, maybe she’ll be the one showing up on his doorstep tomorrow night—and maybe she’ll have an invitation.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated_.


End file.
